Whisk (A) at high speed till stiff (the eggs would be tripled in volume). Fold in plain flour in batches and follow with the melted butter mixture. Fold the batter well and pour into a greased and lined 8" round pan. Bake in preheated oven of 160C for about 45 minutes. Cool the cake and slice into 3 layers.

Kaya filling

400ml pandan juice* + 50g butter + 120g fine sugar

250g packet fresh coconut milk + 150g water, mix together

70g hoen kwe flour

2 tsp instant jelly powder

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 tsp pandan paste (optional)

2 to 3 drops of yellow food colouring (optional)

* After washing the pandan leaves (about 7 to 8 leaves), warm them briefly in a microwave oven and cut into small pieces. Blend the leaves with about 500ml water. Sieve the pandan juice and discard the leaves. Use about 20ml for making the sponge and the remaining for making the filling.

You can get hoen kwe flour at supermarket or baking supplies store. Hoen Kwe flour helps to thicken the filling. You can use corn flour or custard powder too, but the texture will be different, and the amount to use may vary too.

Hi, i am an ardent fan of your blog-i finally had the courage to bake my own pandan layer cake with your recipe for my birthday and it was the prettiest cake i have successfully baked!the pandan sponge was nice and soft. but unfortunately i had not enough of the kaya filling because i used a slightly bigger mould so it looked like the leaning tower of Pisa! Still, it was very good. thank you!Lara

Hi, I thought of making a small cake for my hubby's bday. Presently, I bought a mini cake pan (11cm) for baking and wondered how much ingredients should I need to bake such a small cake? Pls advise? Thank u so much...

Hi, I thought of making a small cake for my hubby's bday. Presently, I bought a mini cake pan (11cm) for baking and wondered how much ingredients should I need to bake such a small cake? Pls advise? Thank u so much...

Hi Vanessa, the above recipe is for one 8" cake pan or two 6" cake pans. 11cm is about 4". I have not tried with 4" cake pan before, my guess is the above recipe will make three to four 4" cakes. But making such a small portion may be difficult to handle. If you have a flat rectangular cake pan (those for making Swiss roll), you may want to use my swiss roll recipe to bake a Swiss roll sponge. Then, use a bowl or round cutter to cut out small round sponge instead. For the remaining sponge, you can make small cakes in tea cup, such as Tiramisu. For above pandan layer cake, you need a cake ring or cake pan with a loose bottom.

Hi hi thanks so much for sharing the recipe.... The steps were easy enough for a novice like me to follow through... I had the same problem as one of the fellow bakers... Not enough kaya filling. Nx time i will try one half of the kaya filling. For the cake, i steamed for 45min coz last min discoveredmy oven is down... Still taste great��

Glad that the recipe works out well for you too. The filling is sufficient for 8" to 9" cake. If you make a bigger cake, you will have to increase the filling accordingly. For leftover filling, you can also eat it as a pudding, though I find eating the pudding alone without the sponge is a little sweet

This sponge cake needs a certain ratio of liquid to be added to the batter to give the right texture. For chocolate sponge, I will use all melted butter for the liquid part. However, if I wanted to bake a lighter sponge (say, for Japanese strawberry cake), I will use a combination of melted butter, corn oil and milk to form the liquid portion.

I used a flexi-sized cake ring. If you are using a fixed sized cake ring, both cake pan (for baking) and cake ring should be the same size. The sponge cake will shrink a little after baking, so there will be enough space in the 8" cake ring for the sponge plus the pandan kaya coating. If you used a bigger cake ring, the surrounding pandan kaya layer will be very thick and does not look so nice

Without the Hoen Kwe powder, the filling will be watery and cannot set properly. Alternatively, you may want to substitute with custard powder/corn flour and adjust the amount of jelly powder. But the texture of the filling will be different, and the amount of custard powder/corn flour may also vary.

Sincere thanks for this recipe! I just gave it a try yesterday and it turned out to be an amazing cake to have for dessert :) I thought it was a very clever way to get the colour of the kaya right by adding in the yellow colouring too.

The sponge recipe is really a keeper. Pandan leaves if left to sit in water for too long will give a bitter aftertaste to the pandan juice. So make sure you remove the pandan leaves after blending with water. The kaya layer will thicken with the addition of hoen kwe flour, so doubt you can "overcook" the mixture.